Inertia Enterprises speeds up fusion fuel pellet production to minutes

Inertia Enterprises has developed a technique that shrinks the creation time of fusion fuel pellets from several days to a few minutes, enabling a single pellet to be completed in two to three hours and allowing the process to be scaled industrially. The advance addresses one of ten obstacles the company faces in building its first commercial power plant, after receiving $450 million from investors who expected the firm to commercialize National Ignition Facility technology.

CEO Jeff Lawson described the shift from prototype to mass-manufacturable product and noted the recruitment of engineers from companies such as Apple to tackle factory-scale production. Chief scientist Annie Kritcher, who designed the NIF experiment that first produced net-energy fusion, helped condense crystal growth to about thirty minutes. By using a laser four times more powerful than NIF’s, Inertia can tolerate greater imperfections, further accelerating production and reducing tritium inventory needs.